VA-NITY PL88

It’s happened to everybody: you roll to a stop next to a car with a personalized license plate. Maybe you chuckle. Maybe you cringe. Maybe you miss the green light because you’re trying to figure out what it’s supposed to say, exactly.

In this lesson students use the Fundamental Counting Principle to determine how many messages you can create on a license plate. Let's PERMUT8 our vanity plate!

Students will

Use the Fundamental Counting Principle to calculate the possible number of license plate options in Virginia

Revise permutation calculations based on restrictions

Discuss the practical implications of different license plate requirements

Before you begin

Students should be comfortable with the addition, multiplication, and exponent operations. This lesson is an application of the Fundamental Counting Principle in an interesting and somewhat complicated context. Prior to this lesson, students should have developed the rationale behind the Fundamental Counting Principle through tree diagrams from simpler contexts.

Common Core Standards

Content Standards

7.EE.2
7.SP.8

Mathematical Practices

MP.2
MP.3

Downloads

Shoutouts

Related Lessons

How many different shoes can you design on NIKEiD? Students use the Fundamental Counting Principle to calculate how many color combinations are possible for the popular Nike Air Force 1 shoe, and then they explore the "paralysis-by-analysis" that can come from too much choice.

Like the jacket, this lesson is for Members only.

Some Free Lessons From Mathalicious

How do the rules of an election affect who wins? Students calculate (as a percent) how much of the electoral and popular vote different presidential candidates have received, and add with integers to explore elections under possible alternative voting systems.

Topic:
Number System (NS), Ratios and Proportional Relationships (RP), Reasoning with Equations and Inequalities (REI)